The Christmas Party
by
CHRISTMAS had come round again–merry old Christmas, with his smiling face and wealth of good cheer; and every preparation had been made by the Arlingtons for their annual Christmas party, which was always a gay time for the young friends of the family.
Some hundreds of miles away, in a quiet New-England village, lived Mr. Archer, an uncle of Mr. Arlington. He was a good man; but being a minister of the old school, and well advanced in years, he was strongly prejudiced against all “fashionable follies,” as he called nearly every form of social recreation. Life was, in his eyes, too solemn a thing to be wasted in any kind of trifling. In preaching and praying, in pious meditation, and in going about to do good, much of his time was passed; and another portion of it was spent in reflecting upon and mourning over the thoughtless follies of the world. He had no time for pleasure-taking; no heart to smile at the passing foibles or merry humours of his fellow-men.
Such was the Rev. Mr. Jason Archer–a good man, but with his mind sadly warped through early prejudices, long confirmed. For years he had talked of a journey to the city where his niece, to whom he was much attached, resided. This purpose was finally carried out. It was the day before Christmas, when Mrs. Arlington received a letter from the old gentleman, announcing the fact that she might expect to see him in a few hours, as he was about starting to pay her and her family the long-intended visit.
“Uncle Archer will be here to-morrow,” said Mrs. Arlington to her husband, as soon as she met him after receiving her letter.
“Indeed! And so the good old gentleman has made a move at last?”
“Yes; he’s going to eat his Christmas dinner with us, he says.”
“So much the better. The pleasure of meeting him will increase the joy of the occasion.”
“I am not so sure of that,” replied Mrs. Arlington, looking a little serious. “It would have been more pleasant to have received this visit at almost any other time in the year.”
“Why so?”
“You know his strong prejudices?”
“Oh, against dancing, and all that?”
“Yes; he thinks it a sin to dance.”
“Though I do not.”
“No; but it will take away half my pleasure to see him grieved at any thing that takes place in my house.”
“He’ll not be so weak as that.”
“He thinks it sin, and will be sadly pained at its occurrence. Is it not possible to omit dancing for once?”
“At the party to-morrow night?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Arlington shook his head, as he replied–
“Don’t think of such a thing. We will receive him with true kindness, because we feel it towards the good old man. But we must not cease to do what we know to be right, thus disappointing and marring the pleasure of many, out of deference to a mere prejudice of education in a single person. When we go to see him, we do not expect that any change will be made out of deference to our prejudices or peculiar opinions; and when he comes to see us, he must be willing to tolerate what takes place in our family, even if it does not meet his full approval. No, no; let us not think for a moment of any change in affairs on this account. Uncle Archer hasn’t been present at a gay party nor seen dancing for almost half a century. It may do him good to witness it now. At any rate, I feel curious to see the experiment tried.”
Mrs. Arlington still argued for a little yielding in favour of the good parson’s prejudices, but her husband would not listen to such a thing for a moment. Every thing, he said, must go on as usual.
“A guest who comes into a family,” he remarked, “should always conform himself to the family order; then there is no reaction upon him, and all are comfortable and happy. He is not felt as a thing foreign and incongruous, but as homogeneous. To break up the usual order, and to bend all to meet his personal prejudices and peculiarities, is only to so disturb the family sphere as to make it actually repellent. He is then felt as an unassimilated foreign body, and all secretly desire his removal.”